


The Lost and the Waiting

by obirain



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Implied Sexual Activity, Implied/Referenced Sex, Light Angst, Other, allusion to sexy times but nothing your grandma would faint over, gender neutral reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28512606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obirain/pseuds/obirain
Summary: Following the end of the war, you'd thought you and Luke could finally be together. But all this "Jedi business" has other plans for you.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker/Reader, Luke Skywalker/You
Kudos: 7





	The Lost and the Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Request from Tumblr: "Hello my dear Aubrey! Congrats on 300 🥳🎊 I would like to submit a Luke request with the prompt 'That sounds a lot like "goodbye."' If you can add some spiciness that’d be great but if angst is all there is I’ll gladly take it! Thank you 😙"

The bed is cold when you wake up. Cold, dark, early—it’s impossible to tell how long you’ve been asleep. All you know is the empty space beside you. You feel around blindly, looking for him. But your hands land on nothing but cooled sheets. They’ve been cool for a long time.

“Fuck.” Your voice is hoarse and your limbs stiff with sleep, not to mention the way your thighs tremble whenever you move them. But you climb out of the tangled sheets anyway, shivering when your bare feet touch the floor. You tug on the first tunic you find— _his,_ by the feel of it—from the pile of discarded clothes and tiptoe out of your bedroom.

Luke’s standing at the window, watching the stars as they drift by. He’s still, but not tense. Perhaps that should comfort you—his serenity, his ambivalence. But it doesn’t. It’s pure whiplash to see him so distant, in spirit if not in body, when just a few hours ago you’d clung to him and he to you, losing yourselves in your moans, your cries, your declarations whispered to the dark. Even now as you lean against the icy metal you can hear them as if he’s right in your ear. Just as you can feel the bruises painting your collar as if he’s still leaving them, and the ache in your legs as if he’s still pressed against you.

But that was then, and this is now. You sigh and turn around. Back to the empty bed.

“Don’t go.”

You squeeze your eyes shut. When you face him again, you can’t help but wonder if you’d imagined it; he hasn’t moved a muscle.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t.”

He turns just enough for you to see half of his face, shadowed against the starry sky, and extends a hand. You hesitate. There’s a look in his eyes, a note in his voice that sucks the air from your lungs and chills you to the bone. But you approach him anyway; the warmth of his skin on yours is too tempting to pass up. He clasps your hand in both of his and traces the lines of your palm, the curve of your nails, the little scars on your fingers. His gaze is focused and his touch feather-light as he presses figure eights into your wrist. You can’t tell if it’s more for your sake or his.

“How long have you been up?”

He keeps looking at your hand as if he hadn’t heard you, but you can feel the pressure increase by the smallest degree. “Couple hours, maybe.”

A couple hours? Had he slept _at all?_

“Is everything okay?” you ask more tentatively.

 _Finally_ he looks you in the eye and smiles. Somewhere in that smile, buried deep, is the farm boy from Tatooine, the nobody you fell in love with. But before you now is a man, a _someone,_ a warrior imbued with strength you’d never know from the tenderness with which he holds you.

A moment later his smile fades. He looks back to your hand, nodding. “I can’t stay here.”

“But—but the war’s over.” 

“It is. But not for me.”

You hate how fast the lump swells in your throat. You hate how fast tears spring to your eyes. But most of all, _you hate_ how he still looks at you like he looks at the galaxy. Not like your nobody, gazing wide-eyed into the night sky, dreaming of when he’d get off that wasteland of a planet, but like a hero who’s travelled and tested it, who knows its wonders and horrors alike in their terrible glory, and _loves_ it all the more.

How can he look at you _like that_ when every word’s a mallet to your heart?

“Why not?” Your voice shakes; you hate that, too. It’s all you can do to keep your tears at bay. “We could have a life. Or… we could make one. You could—you could stay. With me. We— _we could be happy.”_

He brings a hand to your face, fingers ghosting over your temple and cheekbone. You shudder; his mechanical hand is always a few degrees cooler than the rest of his skin and the gesture is lighter than the breeze across your face. But you can’t help but lean into his touch.

“I know. And I—” his voice breaks as he shakes his head. “I want to be happy with you. But—”

“But what?” You squeeze his hand, too tightly. He sighs. 

“I’m a Jedi, like my father before me.”

“Luke, your father’s—”

“Gone, I know.” His voice is even, soft. A part of you wants him to glare at you, to raise his voice, to give you a reason to be angry. This gentle understanding is somehow so much harder to swallow. “So is Ben, and so is Yoda. They trusted me; I can’t let them down. I can’t stop until the work is done.”

“Jedi work?” He nods. You set your jaw, desperate to pull yourself together. “Then let me come with you.”

Luke shakes his head and smiles sadly. “You know I can’t.”

You close your eyes, letting your tears finally fall. They catch on his hand; he wipes them away with his thumb and rubs them into your skin. You’re too tired and numb to stop him, though part of you wants to wriggle out of his grasp, stomp back to your bedroom, and lock the door. You’ve waited years for this. You left your home for this. You destroyed the Empire for this, for a chance at a life filled with warmth and light and laughter, for a life with him. Yes, you’ve waited all these years for _him._

 _Why are you running away from me?_ you cry out in your mind. _I don’t understand._

His hand wraps around the crown of your head, pulling you into him. At your side, his fingers interlock with yours and squeeze tightly. All at once you’re surrounded with warmth like he’s holding your very heart in his hands. You muffle a sob into his robes; it’s too much.

“I’m not running,” he murmurs into your hair. “This isn’t goodbye.”

**“It sure sounds a lot like goodbye.”**

“It’s not. It’s not; I promise.” He presses a kiss to the top of your head as he runs his hand up and down the dip of your spine, tracing what feels like lettering through the thin tunic. “I’ll come back.”

You swallow down another cry. “You better, asshole.”

He chuckles and drops his head to your neck. His hot breath fans across the sensitive skin as he kisses along the marks he’d left there. You shiver. “So cold…” he whispers.

You bury your face into his chest, lulled half to sleep under the gentle weight of his hands. “’M always cold without you.”

For just a moment his hands stutter, before resuming their exploration with more urgency. He hums and sucks another bruise into your shoulder, and you begin to forget your anger and heartbreak. The intimacy overwhelms you: as much as you relish the carnal, white-hot wildfire of his bare skin against yours as you take your pleasure together, there’s something about cradling each other in the cold quiet ship, the gentle blossom of warmth, that you crave. It’s like a little heartbeat—blooming and breathing and _yours._ Yours to hold, yours to cherish. Yours to cling to, alone in the dark.

“Let’s go back to bed,” you mumble. “Just for tonight.”

He doesn’t answer. He only soothes the newest mark with his tongue and kisses back up your neck until he reaches your lips. He kisses you sweetly, slowly. Softly. Reverently. You sigh at the taste of him, winding a hand into his hair, pulling it just enough to make him shudder. He grips your waist like an anchor. 

“Back to bed,” he agrees against your lips. You’re both breathless.

Your feet still freeze on the floor as you pad back to bed, but you don’t notice—not with Luke’s body still pressed against you, and his fingers still entwined with yours. You don’t even break apart to clamber onto the mattress. It’s awkward and graceless, inching across the bed like this, but it pulls a childish giggle from the two of you that makes your heart sing. And as Luke curls into your side with his head in the crook of your neck and his arms around your waist, you can’t help but smile in the dark. _Yes, that’s him._ _Still him._ You card your fingers through his hair, nails lightly scraping across his scalp.

“Have to leave soon,” he mumbles against your chest.

“Hmm.”

“’L be back.” He yawns. “Promise.”

You squeeze the arm draped over your middle. “I’ll be waiting. Promise.”

He sighs and relaxes under your hands; you can feel his smile against your skin. Eventually his fingers still at your sides, and yours in his hair. Somewhere in your sleep-ridden mind you catch glimpses of the life you’ve sought so desperately. It must be parsecs away, halfway across the galaxy, but you can see the glimmer of light and hear the peels of laughter as vividly as you feel the warmth around you. And, somewhere even deeper, you know the warmth will never leave.

Even if the bed is cold when you wake up.


End file.
